2.  Pleb: 
  Go fetch fire!

  3.  Pleb: 
  Plucke down Benches!

  2.  Pleb: 
  Plucke down Formes, Windowes, anything.

    [2. Julius Caesar.  III, 2. 268-70.  Variorum Edition Furness. 
    Phila. 1913.]

But we have not space for a more extended quotation, and the passage given is sufficiently representative.

The faults are obvious.  The translator has not ventured to reproduce Shakespeare’s blank verse, nor, indeed, could that be expected.  The Alexandrine had long held sway in Danish poetry.  In Rolf Krage (1770), Ewald had broken with the tradition and written an heroic tragedy in prose.  Unquestionably he had been moved to take this step by the example of his great model Klopstock in Bardiete.[3] It seems equally certain, however, that he was also inspired by the plays of Shakespeare, and the songs of Ossian, which came to him in the translations of Wieland.[4]

    [3.  Ronning—­Rationalismens Tidsalder. 11-95.]

    [4.  Ewald—­Levnet og meninger.  Ed. Bobe.  Kbhn. 1911, p. 166.]

A few years later, when he had learned English and read Shakespeare in the original, he wrote Balders Dod in blank verse and naturalized Shakespeare’s metre in Denmark.[5] At any rate, it is not surprising that this unknown plodder far north in Trondhjem had not progressed beyond Klopstock and Ewald.  But the result of turning Shakespeare’s poetry into the journeyman prose of a foreign language is necessarily bad.  The translation before us amounts to a paraphrase,—­good, respectable Danish untouched by genius.  Two examples will illustrate this.  The lines: 

  ....  Now lies he there,
  And none so poor to do him reverence.

    [5. Ibid. II, 234-235.]

are rendered in the thoroughly matter-of-fact words, appropriate for a letter or a newspaper “story”: 

  ....  Nu ligger han der,
  endog den Usleste naegter ham Agtelse.

Again,

  I have o’ershot myself to tell you of it,

is translated: 

  Jeg er gaaen for vidt at jeg sagde Eder noget derom.

On the other hand, the translation presents no glaring errors; such slips as we do find are due rather to ineptitude, an inability to find the right word, with the result that the writer has contented himself with an accidental and approximate rendering.  For example, the translator no doubt understood the lines: 

  The evil that men do lives after them,
  The good is oft interred with their bones.

but he could hit upon nothing better than: 

  Det Onde man gjor lever endnu efter os;
  det Gode begraves ofte tilligemed vore Been.

which is both inaccurate and infelicitous.  For the line

  He was my friend, faithful and just to me.

our author has: 

  Han var min Ven, trofast og oprigtig mod mig!